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Wednesday, April 13, 2016

The Walking Dead universe showed at least a little mortality as Fear the Walking Dead
opened season two with a 3.08 in the 9/8c hour. It's still a massive number (would qualify as a megahit by A18-49+ standards), but down 38% from its series premiere late last summer, and 0.23
points behind its previous series low.

Another interesting note about FTWD is the fact that the Fear edition of after-show Talking Dead had relatively bad retention: its 1.05 rating was just 35% of the Fear rating. Compare this to the most recent spring episodes of the Walking Dead mothership: Talking Dead averaged 40% retention, did much better than that (46%/44%) for the premiere and finale respectively, and never did worse than 37%. I'm probably reading too much into this, but it seems like a potential red flag for the engagement level in the show. We'll see if it improves going forward.

TBS opened new comedy The Detour with a 0.52 at 9:00, dropping to 0.46 at 9:30. Though far from amazing, it has to be considered one of the more promising recent ratings for a TBS original, crushing what Angie Tribeca had been doing leading out of American Dad! and also beating where Clipped premiered last summer (0.42).

A growth story worth watching on cable is Starz' Outlander, which opened season two with a new series high 0.39 and was 44% above the Season 1B premiere last year. At least so far, it's not exactly a success story on the level of fellow Starz series Power, which surged into the 0.5-0.6 range last summer, but it's another promising one to be sure.

Showtime began its transition to the late spring, mixing the finale of Billions (0.32) with its comedy block of veteran House of Lies (0.17) and weak newbie Dice (0.11).

Syfy also had a transitional Monday, wrapping up The Magicians (0.27) on the same night that it premiered newbie Hunters (0.16). Even on Syfy, a network that has been struggling to get any real scripted traction, 0.16 is a pretty bad premiere number: less than half of where The Expanse (0.33) and The Magicians (0.39/0.41) started, and even below most of the Friday filler like Dark Matter (0.31), Killjoys (0.26) and recently introduced Wynonna Earp (0.20).

It was mostly an upswing week for the broadcasters, and there were some nice upticks on cable as well: WGN's Outsiders (0.32) and Underground (0.34) each hit their best ratings since the series premieres. And The Americans was up to a season high 0.32 on FX... as I said a couple weeks ago, this show usually falls hugely post-premiere, so that kind of number helps cut into its year-to-year deficit big-time.

FULL TABLE:

Name

Net

Ep

A18-49

Last

Seas

Avg

y2y

Proj

ProjPlus

Skew

Male

Fear the Walking Dead

AMC

1

3.08

2

3.08

-38%

2.43

164

59%

American Crime Story

FX

10

1.34

+21%

1

1.33

1.33

90

51%

50%

Talking Dead: Fear

AMC

1

1.05

1

1.05

0.78

53

57%

Better Call Saul

AMC

9

0.82

+1%

2

0.90

-44%

0.87

59

53%

67%

Vikings

HIST

8

0.66

-4%

4

0.67

-16%

0.68

46

39%

58%

Bates Motel

A&E

5

0.58

+2%

4

0.60

-25%

0.55

37

51%

39%

American Dad!

FOX

11

0.59

+5%

11

0.56

-7%

0.55

37

68%

The Detour

TBS

2

0.49

-6%

1

0.49

0.43

29

56%

Archer

FX

2

0.41

-24%

7

0.47

-25%

0.41

28

66%

67%

Shadowhunters

FREE

13

0.30

-6%

1

0.41

0.41

28

54%

30%

Outlander

STRZ

1

0.39

3

0.39

+44%

0.38

26

34%

Broad City

COME

8

0.34

-6%

1

0.37

0.36

25

75%

Awkward

MTV

16

0.28

+12%

3

0.35

-31%

0.35

24

66%

27%

Billions

SHOW

12

0.32

-3%

1

0.33

0.33

22

40%

60%

Underground

WGNA

5

0.34

+17%

1

0.31

0.31

21

37%

40%

The Magicians

SYFY

13

0.27

-4%

1

0.30

0.30

20

49%

Outsiders

WGNA

11

0.32

+19%

1

0.28

0.29

20

45%

56%

The Americans

FX

4

0.32

+33%

4

0.28

-25%

0.23

16

37%

58%

Young and Hungry

FREE

10

0.27

+17%

2

0.26

-30%

0.24

16

61%

Girls

HBO

8

0.27

-4%

5

0.25

-15%

0.25

17

59%

45%

Baby Daddy

FREE

10

0.28

+27%

2

0.25

-36%

0.24

16

59%

Vinyl

HBO

9

0.24

+20%

1

0.22

0.23

15

45%

61%

Faking It

MTV

14

0.19

0%

2

0.22

-40%

0.22

15

60%

24%

Motive

USA

2

0.22

+10%

3

0.21

0.19

13

37%

Damien

A&E

6

0.18

+50%

1

0.20

0.19

13

48%

36%

Wynonna Earp

SYFY

2

0.15

-25%

1

0.17

0.13

9

31%

House of Lies

SHOW

1

0.17

5

0.17

-48%

0.13

9

54%

Hunters

SYFY

1

0.16

1

0.16

0.12

8

38%

Stitchers

FREE

3

0.11

-39%

2

0.15

-63%

0.12

8

47%

Dice

SHO

1

0.11

1

0.11

0.09

6

55%

The Cablemetrics table can be sorted by clicking any of the categories at the top (and a second click will sort in the other direction.) After having sorted by a category, you can hold SHIFT and click another category to sort by the second category within the first.